Eva and family celebrate her 100th birthday

Eva Cormier-Bilodeau with some of the youngest attendees of her surprise 100th birthday party. Joyce Roberts photo Although her birthday isn’t until November, friends and family gathered last weekend to celebrate Eva CormierBilodeau’s 100th birthday.

Eva’s son, Ernie Cormier, was able to keep the party a secret from his mother. On the day of the celebration he told her he wanted to take her and a neighbor out to lunch. But inside the Tavern on the Common Restaurant in Rutland, she was greeted by friends and family, some of whom she had not seen for years.

“I was very surprised,” said Eva. “All the people I hadn’t seen in years were there. It was nice to see that people bother to come over.”

Eva was born in Bouctouche, New Brunswick in 1905. When she was two, her family moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where her father worked on the telephone lines. When she was five or six, her family returned to New Brunswick to work on the family farm.

“I remember the day he [her father] got a telegram saying that his father had died in Canada,” said Eva.

Her father left immediately to tend to the farm, while her mother stayed behind to pack up their things and then took the train to Canada.

“On the train I was looking out the window and my mother said, ‘Don’t look out the window, you’ll get sick.’ Sure enough, I got sick,” Eva said with a laugh.

When the family moved back to Canada, Eva’s parents had four more children — two girls and two boys. As the oldest, Eva helped take care of them

“The night my first brother was born — of course they sent you away that night — I came back in the morning and my auntie was there and she said, ‘Come see what your mother found last night.’ I said, ‘Something else for me to take care of,’ and walked right by,” she said. “When he grew up he was my best brother, though. But I was mad that day.”

Eva’s father also worked as a cook on the railroad. When he was gone she and her mother took care of the farm, including a bevy of animals.

“You name it and they were there,” she said.

During World War I, the farm gained a few more occupants.

“During the first world war some guys didn’t want to go, so they came up to our house to hide,” said Eva. “My mother used to feed them, there was always plenty to eat. During the day, they’d practice jumping a fence in case the officers came after them.”

When she was a teenager, Eva’s family returned to America, this time living in Gardner.

By day she worked as a furniture upholsterer and at night she attended school.

“To my knowledge, it was not a high school education,” said her son Ernie. “I think it was a citizenship issue. You probably had to be able to read English.” Eva’s first language was French.

“I used to tell my mother, ‘We’re not learning anything. We go there and just talk and play’,” Eva said. Life in Gardner was more exciting for a teenager than working on a farm.

“We had a lot of company all the time,” Eva said. “We had a piano and on weekends the house would fill up with young folks singing and playing piano.”

In 1933 she married Gerard Cormier at Holy Rosary Church in Gardner. Although the couple didn’t meet until they lived in the states they were from neighboring villages in Canada.

“He said he knew me,” said Eva. “But, I didn’t know him.”

The couple moved to the top floor of a triple-decker on Central Tree Road in Rutland. Besides Ernie they had another son, Raymond, who later died in an accident. In 1948 they built a house on Inwood Road where Eva stayed for many years.

In the mid-1940s, once her sons were in school, Eva went back to work at the state sanatorium. She started in the housekeeping department, switched to the nursing department and worked her way up.

“When they started licensing nurses she was in the first class that got licensed,” Ernie said.

Eva fondly remembers her days treating tuberculosis patients.

“I took care of patients for a long time,” she said. “I remember when I used to come on one floor the patients used to clap. If you’re sick and can’t do something you appreciate little things.

“They [employees at the hospital] were all nice. We all knew each other.”

Gerard worked as a machinist in Worcester. Often, he would get called out to repair machines in other parts of the country. Eva got to know his partners’ wives and they would wait for their husbands to return at the Worcester Airport.

When her sons married, they also had sons. Eva’s great-grandchildren are also boys.

After Gerald died, Eva, at age 79, married an “older” man. Albert Bilodeau was 84 at the time, and also from the same area in Canada.

After the death of her second husband, Eva moved into an apartment at Hawthorne Hills where she enjoys her neighbors and the fresh air.

“Why have a big house by yourself?” she said.

As for turning 100, Eva said she doesn’t have any special plans.

“To me it’s all the same. I’ve had too many birthdays now to have something special,” she said.

Eva insists there’s no secret to her longevity. Her mother lived three months shy of her 104th birthday. And growing up on a farm may have helped.